HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE. Satanic scents

The sun. The heat. The bikini babes. “Let’s go camping!” says Bins. “We have a hearse! We have an ice-cooler! It’s unhealthy to stay cooped up all day breathing paint-fumes.” I say, “You go inhale car-exhaust and I’ll stick with my paint-fumes.” He calls me a bourgeois pumpkin. I call him an aging hornet. Then his enormous Viking friend Birk comes by with a portable barbecue grill tucked under one giant arm and a frozen pig under the other, saying, “Hey! We’re going camping!” So we go.

Not right away, of course. It takes two days to decide how much food to take. After all, ‘camping’ is really only a synonym for ‘gorging-on-everything-we-wouldn’t-dream-of-eating-inside-a-house.’ Birk and Bins race about getting the pig properly thawed and butchered while I boil eggs and make stacks of cheese sandwiches. They return with 10 different flavours of tortilla chips and gallons of salsa. We pack our clothes and food into the car at night, so that we can set off at four in the morning with only the refrigerated stuff to load into the cooler.

I go to sleep fully clothed so that I can wake up at the last minute. Bins of course is leaping about like a kangaroo with a mouse in its pouch from three onwards. I hear Birk’s car pulling into the driveway and Bins goes out, laden with freezy-packs and containers of meat. Then there’s an odd silence. I lock the front door and go out. Both guys are standing at the open rear of the hearse, their faces lit by a tiny torch in Birk’s hand. Bins beckons to me with a finger to his lips. I go over and see: paw prints.

“Someone forgot to lock the back of the car,” whispers Bins, glaring at me. “Wha—? That was you!”I whisper back. “Doesn’t matter,” says Birk. “He’s inside now.” Who? “Your raccoon, Kookie,” says Birk. “Are you sure it’s him?” I ask. Bins is nodding. “Must be. I saw something black moving inside.” I start to say, “Kookie’s pale brown —” but the other two are convinced. “Let’s go,” says Bins. “We’ll take him camping too. He will enjoy.” I’m too sleepy to argue, so I climb in.

The food containers have been well secured, leaving me plenty of place to recline. I crawl in, spread my cushions and fall back into dreams, lulled by the motion of the car. When I wake up, we have stopped. Sunlight is streaming in through a window. A hand is rocking my shoulder. When I try to sit up however, that same hand holds me down. “Don’t move!” hisses Bins in my ear. “Open your eyes slowly.”

Inches from my face I see a furry black form with flashes of white. A young skunk. She has bright eyes, twitchy whiskers and a naughty smile. “Hello, human!” she says. “You know the deal, right? One move and I’ll spray you with a stink worse than Satan’s sewer?” Yup, I say wordlessly, hardly daring to breathe.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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